7.1.5 Mastery Unholy Thread

[Shadowman 747]

What is Necroclaw? It's a base UH spec designed for players without Tak'theritrix's Shoulderpads or Instructor's Fourth Lesson. This spec is about maximizing a small amount of resources, by using Clawing Shadows and Necrosis. We hover between 0 and 4 wounds and use Death Coil, Clawing Shadows, Outbreak, and Festering Strike as core spells, although we use them very differently than a Castigator build would.

This build is currently (as of 7.0) not viable. The 7.1.5 patch is bringing a host of amazing changes. Every aspect of this build is seeing huge buffs. 6% baseline damage, and huge buffs to every chosen dps talent. It is well within reason to believe that with the buffs, it will skyrocket to the best dk dps spec. In addition to throughput, it plays with fights better than the top frost build does (BoS frost being very dominant on PTR), and no broad UH build is as strong as this one.

Strengths:
High utility with 2 grips
Most adaptable mDPS in the game, able to very effectively deal with all mechanics aside from mobility mechanics.
Tankiest dps class in the game, with 4 active CDs and passivly reduced aoe damage taken.
30 Yard range on most spells, including AoE burst
Dynamic rotation and on the fly stratagy needed to excell
Easy to learn

Weaknesses:
AoE damage gated behind defile to an extreme
Very low mobility
Slow GCD
Uninteresting dps cds
Hard to master


Disclaimer, most information gathered HAS NOT HAD HARD SIMMING DONE. I run live sims, I test on ptr, I run napkin math to determine the value of spells, and I run extensive dummy parses to optimize rotation.

In this guide/post, I'll go over build, spell usage, opener, loose rotation, a loose stat priority overview, and notable items, such as legendaries and purps with additional effects.

So I'm gonna start with the talent build and then explain the choices.

Ebon Fever.
The buffs to this talent (120% plague damage in half the time up from 100%) in addition to our altered stat priority make this pretty amazing. Faster ticks means more eruptions, and this talent upps our burst and sustained aoe a lot, as well as being the best for ST. The downside is you need to cast outbreak just shy of twice as often, but the good news is, it's more damage, rune for rune, than a Necrosis empowered Claw. Generally a good choice, scales on mastery, does good dps.

Blighted Rune Weapon.
This is a tricky one. It doesn't directly give you resources like Pustules does. What it does do is free up resources that would go to festering strike (rune inefficient outside of niche cases), and allows you to use them for CS or outbreak. It gives you 8-10 runes worth of wounds, without the bad, non-scaling physical damage, freeing up said runes to pop the generated wounds with pure shadow damage. This amps the value of mastery up, as well as generally being more efficient.

Clawing Shadows.
The bread and butter of this build. CS does more base damage than SS, and it's pure shadow, making it even better. Another pro of this talent is that you aren't running Castigator, making the spec very steady and unreliant on major RNG to do standard dps.

We have 2 utility tiers, cookie cutter Corpse Shield and Abomination are mandatory.

Necrosis.
The talent people love to hate. But goddamn, it's strong. This is what makes the build. Clawing Shadows hits like a truck with this. It's actually kinda crazy. There's a case for Shadow infusion with specific items.

Defile.
Our last talent. Ptr is buffing it, and the build makes it nuts. It's a rune effecient ST dps spell that scales exponentially with aoe, AS WELL AS giving a massive mastery buff with each tick. Generally your go to, but like SI, there is a case for dark arbiter with the right legendary.


Lets take a look at spells.

Festering Strike.
A damage efficient spell, but only because of wounds. This spell has a time and place, but if possible, we want to minimize our casts. There are four conditions where you cast this spell.
1 it's your opener, you use 2
2 you're building for apoc
3 if you have 0 wounds
4 if you don't have enough RP to cast death coil to empower claw, while you run no risk of overcapping wounds

Clawing Shadows.
Your bread and butter. Replaces Scourge Strike. You cast this when you have the Necrosis buff and when you have wounds to pop. It's a damn strong spell, and it's our primary damage source. 30y range helps a ton.

Death Coil.
Does some shadow damage. Empowers CS. The MOST IMPORTANT SPELL IN YOUR ROTATION. Here's where I go over the nitty gritty of Necrosis. Casting DC gives Necrosis, it is a 5 second non-stacking buff that is consumed by CS to increase that CS cast's damage by 40%. You do not need to imediately cast CS after DC, usually you will, but don't count on it. Necroclaw is not as strong as a refresh on Outbreak, a defile cast, or FS at 0 wounds. What you can do is cast DC, cast outbreak, and then you can CS, the buff is still there and it will still be consumed. It's tempting to DC>outbreak>DC>CS because you think DC needs to be cast right before CS, but you are shooting yourself in the foot, you wasted a DC. This talent is simple, but easy to mess up. Use it right and that's most of your damage. 30y range

Outbreak.
debuffs the target for 6 seconds, applying Plague to all targets in an aoe each second. Maintain Plague. Ezpz. Don't let it drop for more than a second. 30y range.

Defile.
DnD replacer that does more damage. It grows and applies a 200 mastery buff per tick. The buff stscks up to 10, or 2000 mastery. It also causes CS to hit all targets in the pool. When using Defile with 2+ targets, DC\necrosis becomes gcd ineffecient. CS spam is optimal, as each target is 100% bonus damage. Ideally set up wounds on all targets before defiling. Weave DCs if rune starved. This is the hardest spell to use optimally. In ST, it's drop and forget, set up so you have 100% uptime and you're golden.

Blighted Rune Weapon.
Generates 10 wounds over time, use on CD if no risk of wound capping.

Apocalypse.
Burst 6 wounds, get 6 zombies, easy spell. Just watch the CD and 10s before it's up, start watching your wounds. Use at 6 wounds on cd.

Dark Transformation.
Cast and forget dps cd. use on cd

Summon Gargoyle
Cast and forget dps cd. use on cd.

I'm not going over a set rotation. It's a dynamic flow, it's not a priorities list, as your focus shifts depending on where you are. Just use Necrosis and death coil properly and keep Plague up 100%.

The opener is rather set.

Army at 7s before pull, BRW and prepot at 3, Dark Transformation on next gcd, on pull cast Summon Gargoyle running too the boss, and Outbreak after, at this point, you are at the boss, your first melee hit should land, and you cast festering strike twice, and then Apoc at 6-8 wounds. From there, you fall under standard rotation.

Stats. I don't like set stat priorities and think they're for scrubs. Sim yourself. For those who won't sim, str>mast>haste=crit>vers. I strongly suggest simming yourself, there is no downside.

Notable items.

Ring of Collapsing Futures.
Dope ring, good stats, and an active that shoots a shadowbolt off gcd. The shadowbolt does scale off of mastery. But here's the thing, the cast has a 15s cd, bur applies a 30s stacking debuff that progressivly increases the chance of your activation to incur a 5 minute cd. Do not macro it, it requires micro. set up a weakaura or tellmewhen to manage the debuff. During the fight, you typically want no stacks on activation, although towards the end of a fight, you can start gambling its cd with minimal losses. dont put it on a 5m cd 45s into the fight, its a bad idea. This ring's active offers more throughput than some legendary item passives. It is god tier, run kara weekly, save tokens for the final boss.

Instructor's Fourth Lesson.
Meh. I don't think it slots into this build well, and requires an altered verson. This legendary thrives on resource excess, while this build maximizes what little it has. It will likely require its own build. In relation to the Necroclaw build, it upps the FS casts and devalues Necrosis, CS, and mastery as a whole. Lots of anti-synergy

Tak'theritrix's Shoulderpads
Good, but likely requires its own build, Shadow Infusion and Dark Arbiter are musts.

Death March
The new UH lego helm. DC reduces DnD/defile cd by 2s. It's damn good. I think it's the best for this build, although shoulderpads pet build is likely the outright strongest UH spec in 7.1.5. It's just a really solid throughput legendary.

The rest of the legendaries and items impact is typically low.

Enchants, gems, and consumes. Sim yourself, get the best gem/enchant for you. For lazy's 1x Tiger's Eye of Strength, Masterful Shadowruby as gems. Hidden Saytr for neck, 200 str to back, 200 mast to rings, and fallen crusader to weapon. Consumes are Flask of Countless Armies, Nightfallen Delicacy Platter, and Defiled Augment Rune.

This wrapps up what I have, I will likely be updating and touching up on this as the ptr progresses and as patch hits live.

[TiagoRamos]

Great stuff bro...
Now I gotta start changing my castigator stats and get more mastery
Im one of the guys with the shoulders... will DA really be a better option for ST? Maybe defile for M+ and DA for raids/st?
Is the new pet damage that big to get SI instead of Necrosis?

[Acidbaron]

I own the shoulders and i currently don't recommend going SI with it, more mastery also means that Clawing shadows will scale more with necrosis then SI will.

Our number of death coils has also been decreased due to the runic regen changes.

The shoulders do not provide a damage buff to our main pet but to our others, which are cd's not effected by SI making it the shoulders good for stats but not something i recommend using if you have the better alternatives. So having more dark transformations does nothing besides that window you can use it on. There also has to be a lot of RNG involved for it to not be delayed to use or delaying to use DA or apoc, both of which are generally considered damage loss. If the Shoulders would buff our DT damage by 30% then that would be a total different ball game, sadly it does not.


Legendary wrists are still superior to everything else.


To people reading this i recommend joining discord and asking there instead, rather then believing this as gospel. Since even the pro's and con's here i don't even know where to begin to start pointing out errors. No we are not the most adaptable class, we suffer quite heavily from target swapping and also suffer from movement, our defensives are at best on par with others.

You want to minimize the use of festering strikes, okay have fun with that theory.

Corpse shield being mandatory, yes of course who doesn't want to sacrifice a large chunk of their damage to get an absorb and let their pet be death for 30 seconds, not to mention naming it mandatory..... I bet you can't even name the number of physical aoe wide damage mechanics in nighthold or put a number to it.

[Maxweii]

Necroclaw, it won't catch on and the information here isn't correct anyways.

Ebon Fever is not the go to talent, it's decent in niche situations but AWS is better ST and BS is better aoe/cleave. BRW while being close to PP in ST uses is still behind and generally wouldn't be taken unless there's a fight with few adds spawns but they line up with its CD. Defile isn't used unless it's an aoe/cleave situation, SR is used in 1-2 targets so there's no real reason for what you said on that part. Lingering Apparition will do tons better than Corpse Shield, unless your RL specifically says 'we need you to soak something' then there's no need for Corpse Shield.

The shoulders are still shit in 7.1.5 and you still don't take DA or SI with them. Helm is shit in ST but amazing for aoe. Bracers are still hands down the best overall legendary.

Please stop. Seeing as I'm someone who plays CS in live, and is doing a lot of work for Unholy theorycrafting, please bury this 'guide' as it's so incorrect.

Here's a link to my doc so you can see some actual info on CS Mastery builds in the next patch.
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/12B-ZLbhTUlYPV1ek_90uGLZiOP5EuZeIoejZOYzR4L0/edit?usp=sharing>

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Great stuff bro...
Now I gotta start changing my castigator stats and get more mastery
Im one of the guys with the shoulders... will DA really be a better option for ST? Maybe defile for M+ and DA for raids/st?
Is the new pet damage that big to get SI instead of Necrosis?

Please do not listen to a word the OP said.

[flyingspatula]

Necroclaw, it won't catch on and the information here isn't correct anyways.

Ebon Fever is not the go to talent, it's decent in niche situations but AWS is better ST and BS is better aoe/cleave. BRW while being close to PP in ST uses is still behind and generally wouldn't be taken unless there's a fight with few adds spawns but they line up with its CD. Defile isn't used unless it's an aoe/cleave situation, SR is used in 1-2 targets so there's no real reason for what you said on that part. Lingering Apparition will do tons better than Corpse Shield, unless your RL specifically says 'we need you to soak something' then there's no need for Corpse Shield.

The shoulders are still shit in 7.1.5 and you still don't take DA or SI with them. Helm is shit in ST but amazing for aoe. Bracers are still hands down the best overall legendary.

Please stop. Seeing as I'm someone who plays CS in live, and is doing a lot of work for Unholy theorycrafting, please bury this 'guide' as it's so incorrect.

Here's a link to my doc so you can see some actual info on CS Mastery builds in the next patch.
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/12B-ZLbhTUlYPV1ek_90uGLZiOP5EuZeIoejZOYzR4L0/edit?usp=sharing>

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Please do not listen to a word the OP said.

Your googledoc was above my head on understanding all the sims. Generally speaking, should I just try to grab any high ilvl gear with mastery for 7.1.5 for unholy? I've passed on so much mastery gear that was higher ilvl than what I use atm.

[TiagoRamos]

Hahaha whattt? This "guide" is shyt?
Hehe was starting to have some hope...
So I have the shoulders which will still be crap... (even with ghoulds and garg buff...) and got unanivor (which is bugged I read btw? That only procs with pet special attack)?

He has a good point on Ebon Fevor tho...more eruptions. BTw epidemic would never be a good option for m+ with ebon fever? Just remembered this...
But yeah indeed the new helmet legendary will be awesome for m+ aoe...

[Maxweii]

Your googledoc was above my head on understanding all the sims. Generally speaking, should I just try to grab any high ilvl gear with mastery for 7.1.5 for unholy? I've passed on so much mastery gear that was higher ilvl than what I use atm.

21% haste something between 13-18% crit then dump to mastery.

Hahaha whattt? This "guide" is shyt?
Hehe was starting to have some hope...
So I have the shoulders which will still be crap... (even with ghoulds and garg buff...) and got unanivor (which is bugged I read btw? That only procs with pet special attack)?

He has a good point on Ebon Fevor tho...more eruptions. BTw epidemic would never be a good option for m+ with ebon fever? Just remembered this...
But yeah indeed the new helmet legendary will be awesome for m+ aoe...

EF has niche single target use at best and niche aoe use at best. But that's it.

[0verdose]

The sad thing about how excited I am that there is going to be a new unholy build...it still looks like frost will be better. OBRA and BoS builds.

[Maxweii]

The sad thing about how excited I am that there is going to be a new unholy build...it still looks like frost will be better. OBRA and BoS builds.

Frost will be slightly ahead in pure ST but Unholy will be ahead in cleave/aoe.

[seussiii]

Frost will be slightly ahead in pure ST but Unholy will be ahead in cleave/aoe.

I'm a fresh DK reroll and spent some time reading over your google doc. I have 0 context as I never played with the previous/current UH build.

Are you agreeing that a CS/mastery build is going to be best for UH once we cross into 7.1.5? and/or just disagreeing with talent choices for the most part listed in this guide?

If so, do you have a guide similar to what OP created? I've checked the discord but it seems to be lacking compared to the other specs I've played in legion. I'm sure that has to do a lot with the small UH/dk community.

[Zensunni]

21% haste something between 13-18% crit then dump to mastery.



EF has niche single target use at best and niche aoe use at best. But that's it.

Maxweii, how about instead of wholesale slamming on this guide you do one of two things: a.) write your own guide or b.) do a point by point on this guide.

The whole reason we have these forums is to have productive conversations about gameplay. I am very grateful for all your hard work on the new UH builds as it's the build I've wanted to play since launch; why not share your insights? Waiting for the final build?

[Shadowman 747]

I own the shoulders and i currently don't recommend going SI with it, more mastery also means that Clawing shadows will scale more with necrosis then SI will.

Our number of death coils has also been decreased due to the runic regen changes.

The shoulders do not provide a damage buff to our main pet but to our others, which are cd's not effected by SI making it the shoulders good for stats but not something i recommend using if you have the better alternatives. So having more dark transformations does nothing besides that window you can use it on. There also has to be a lot of RNG involved for it to not be delayed to use or delaying to use DA or apoc, both of which are generally considered damage loss. If the Shoulders would buff our DT damage by 30% then that would be a total different ball game, sadly it does not.


Legendary wrists are still superior to everything else.


To people reading this i recommend joining discord and asking there instead, rather then believing this as gospel. Since even the pro's and con's here i don't even know where to begin to start pointing out errors. No we are not the most adaptable class, we suffer quite heavily from target swapping and also suffer from movement, our defensives are at best on par with others.

You want to minimize the use of festering strikes, okay have fun with that theory.

Corpse shield being mandatory, yes of course who doesn't want to sacrifice a large chunk of their damage to get an absorb and let their pet be death for 30 seconds, not to mention naming it mandatory..... I bet you can't even name the number of physical aoe wide damage mechanics in nighthold or put a number to it.

I'm aware of how the shoulders work, and given how powerful DA is (especially with 7.1.5 buffs) with shoulders you either take SI over necrosis or hold DT for Apoc+DA CDs. I personally believe SI will be better, as you aren't artificially extending DT's cd by 30 seconds to line up with your pet spells. SI will reduce the CD enough to line up properly.

Legendary wrists have anti-synergy with this build, and while they are likely a throughput increase, they reduce the spec's scaling and don't play nicely with the core rotation. The requirement of more FS casts goes against everything this build is about, which is minimizing physical damage and maximizing shadow damage to gain the most value from mastery.

You don't understand how pet sac works. It's a 90% all damage reduction, and although if our pet dies it is a damage loss, it is the best choice for the tier for the majority of fights, as it provides the best defensive CD a DK can have. Damage doesn't matter between life and death.

The entire reason I made this thread is to get discussion going because on the discord it is literally non-existent. There is no decent UH theorycrafting, just like there wasn't for frost pre 7.1. The DK community is garbage and I'm trying to get a bit of productive theorycrafting going, I might be wrong, I really encourage people to hard fact check, I don't want people to take this as gospel, but I want to provide a basic start point for 7.1.5 UH. The guide is just there as an initial thoughts kinda thing.

Festering strike does physical damage and is less damage efficient rune for rune than a Necrosis Claw with a wound pop. It doesn't scale, and doesn't have a high enough base damage to be cast outside of niche situations. Go on the PTR and test it yourself, rune for rune it's not efficient.

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Great stuff bro...
Now I gotta start changing my castigator stats and get more mastery
Im one of the guys with the shoulders... will DA really be a better option for ST? Maybe defile for M+ and DA for raids/st?
Is the new pet damage that big to get SI instead of Necrosis?

I think that SI+DA with correct shoulders usage will be optimal over necrosis and defile. I think you could also potentially play necrosis and defile with shoulders as well. I assume SI DA is better with correct skill usage.

[seussiii]

Maxweii, how about instead of wholesale slamming on this guide you do one of two things: a.) write your own guide or b.) do a point by point on this guide.

The whole reason we have these forums is to have productive conversations about gameplay. I am very grateful for all your hard work on the new UH builds as it's the build I've wanted to play since launch; why not share your insights? Waiting for the final build?

Yea I second this. People should be encouraged to try new things. He did preface the guide with the disclaimer about not simming. The problem is that a few posts are just dismissive and condescending. It's not constructive.

If your way is better and you have facts to prove so then you should welcome questions. I just don't see how its helpful to take time to shoot people down but not explain your findings and set them on the right path. As you can see... Its not only the OP who will see this thread.

"EF has niche single target use at best and niche aoe use at best. But that's it."

What is that supposed to mean? Just dismissive and not helpful.

What exactly is this niche st and aoe use? He was talking about M+ AOE ...where aoe is pretty significant depending on the difficulty/affixes. If the "niche aoe use" is m+ and results in a DPS increase then he could be correct.

It just gives off this "I know better so don't question me" vibe


If you are one of those guys that is sick of repeating the same Q/A over and over on these forums and on discord then make a detailed guide

[Shadowman 747]

Necroclaw, it won't catch on and the information here isn't correct anyways.

Ebon Fever is not the go to talent, it's decent in niche situations but AWS is better ST and BS is better aoe/cleave. BRW while being close to PP in ST uses is still behind and generally wouldn't be taken unless there's a fight with few adds spawns but they line up with its CD. Defile isn't used unless it's an aoe/cleave situation, SR is used in 1-2 targets so there's no real reason for what you said on that part. Lingering Apparition will do tons better than Corpse Shield, unless your RL specifically says 'we need you to soak something' then there's no need for Corpse Shield.

The shoulders are still shit in 7.1.5 and you still don't take DA or SI with them. Helm is shit in ST but amazing for aoe. Bracers are still hands down the best overall legendary.

Please stop. Seeing as I'm someone who plays CS in live, and is doing a lot of work for Unholy theorycrafting, please bury this 'guide' as it's so incorrect.

Here's a link to my doc so you can see some actual info on CS Mastery builds in the next patch.
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/12B-ZLbhTUlYPV1ek_90uGLZiOP5EuZeIoejZOYzR4L0/edit?usp=sharing>

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Please do not listen to a word the OP said.

You play CS UH on live, any credibility you have is out the window. I'm sorry, but I can't and won't listen to anyone who chooses to play a suboptimal build in an already suboptimal spec. At least not in competitive theorycrafting. I'm sure you're a fine player and your sims are decent, but you have no credibility. A lot of what you're saying is directly wrong. I've checked numbers on both defile and EF, and I firmly disagree with your standpoint. Defile, with 100% uptime, aka 10 ticks, does very rune effecient ST damage, and applying a 2000 mastery buff, empowering all our other main damage sources. Yes I get SR is good, I've toyed with it, but defile has always pulled out on top in every test i've ran. It's harder to effectively use, but it it offers better throughput and better fight adaptability.

Also, your sims aren't dated, you have no changelogs, and there's no way to tell what has been updated to its current ptr version. Your info is just about as informative as my own. Mine is word of mouth and napkin math, yours is sims without any context or changelogs. Both are just as credible honestly. And by that I mean neither means a thing. Get some proper documentation going for your sims and I'll admit I'm wrong. I'm not gonna claim i'm god and that i'm right when I'm not. I'm likely wrong, but I don't see a factual counter to any of my theorycrafting.

[Deleted]

You play CS UH on live, any credibility you have is out the window. I'm sorry, but I can't and won't listen to anyone who chooses to play a suboptimal build in an already suboptimal spec. At least not in competitive theorycrafting. I'm sure you're a fine player and your sims are decent, but you have no credibility. A lot of what you're saying is directly wrong. I've checked numbers on both defile and EF, and I firmly disagree with your standpoint. Defile, with 100% uptime, aka 10 ticks, does very rune effecient ST damage, and applying a 2000 mastery buff, empowering all our other main damage sources. Yes I get SR is good, I've toyed with it, but defile has always pulled out on top in every test i've ran. It's harder to effectively use, but it it offers better throughput and better fight adaptability.

Also, your sims aren't dated, you have no changelogs, and there's no way to tell what has been updated to its current ptr version. Your info is just about as informative as my own. Mine is word of mouth and napkin math, yours is sims without any context or changelogs. Both are just as credible honestly. And by that I mean neither means a thing. Get some proper documentation going for your sims and I'll admit I'm wrong. I'm not gonna claim i'm god and that i'm right when I'm not. I'm likely wrong, but I don't see a factual counter to any of my theorycrafting.

Well, he is right. Your "guide" is bad and full of errors. Doesn´t matter what he plays on live, he can still see that.

[Elerubard]

What is Necroclaw? It's a base UH spec designed for players without Tak'theritrix's Shoulderpads or Instructor's Fourth Lesson. This spec is about maximizing a small amount of resources, by using Clawing Shadows and Necrosis. We hover between 0 and 4 wounds and use Death Coil, Clawing Shadows, Outbreak, and Festering Strike as core spells, although we use them very differently than a Castigator build would.

This build is currently (as of 7.0) not viable. The 7.1.5 patch is bringing a host of amazing changes. Every aspect of this build is seeing huge buffs. 6% baseline damage, and huge buffs to every chosen dps talent. It is well within reason to believe that with the buffs, it will skyrocket to the best dk dps spec. In addition to throughput, it plays with fights better than the top frost build does (BoS frost being very dominant on PTR), and no broad UH build is as strong as this one.

Strengths:
High utility with 2 grips
Most adaptable mDPS in the game, able to very effectively deal with all mechanics aside from mobility mechanics.
Tankiest dps class in the game, with 4 active CDs and passivly reduced aoe damage taken.
30 Yard range on most spells, including AoE burst
Dynamic rotation and on the fly stratagy needed to excell
Easy to learn

Weaknesses:
AoE damage gated behind defile to an extreme
Very low mobility
Slow GCD
Uninteresting dps cds
Hard to master


Disclaimer, most information gathered HAS NOT HAD HARD SIMMING DONE. I run live sims, I test on ptr, I run napkin math to determine the value of spells, and I run extensive dummy parses to optimize rotation.

In this guide/post, I'll go over build, spell usage, opener, loose rotation, a loose stat priority overview, and notable items, such as legendaries and purps with additional effects.

So I'm gonna start with the talent build and then explain the choices.

Ebon Fever.
The buffs to this talent (120% plague damage in half the time up from 100%) in addition to our altered stat priority make this pretty amazing. Faster ticks means more eruptions, and this talent upps our burst and sustained aoe a lot, as well as being the best for ST. The downside is you need to cast outbreak just shy of twice as often, but the good news is, it's more damage, rune for rune, than a Necrosis empowered Claw. Generally a good choice, scales on mastery, does good dps.

Blighted Rune Weapon.
This is a tricky one. It doesn't directly give you resources like Pustules does. What it does do is free up resources that would go to festering strike (rune inefficient outside of niche cases), and allows you to use them for CS or outbreak. It gives you 8-10 runes worth of wounds, without the bad, non-scaling physical damage, freeing up said runes to pop the generated wounds with pure shadow damage. This amps the value of mastery up, as well as generally being more efficient.

Clawing Shadows.
The bread and butter of this build. CS does more base damage than SS, and it's pure shadow, making it even better. Another pro of this talent is that you aren't running Castigator, making the spec very steady and unreliant on major RNG to do standard dps.

We have 2 utility tiers, cookie cutter Corpse Shield and Abomination are mandatory.

Necrosis.
The talent people love to hate. But goddamn, it's strong. This is what makes the build. Clawing Shadows hits like a truck with this. It's actually kinda crazy. There's a case for Shadow infusion with specific items.

Defile.
Our last talent. Ptr is buffing it, and the build makes it nuts. It's a rune effecient ST dps spell that scales exponentially with aoe, AS WELL AS giving a massive mastery buff with each tick. Generally your go to, but like SI, there is a case for dark arbiter with the right legendary.


Lets take a look at spells.

Festering Strike.
A damage efficient spell, but only because of wounds. This spell has a time and place, but if possible, we want to minimize our casts. There are four conditions where you cast this spell.
1 it's your opener, you use 2
2 you're building for apoc
3 if you have 0 wounds
4 if you don't have enough RP to cast death coil to empower claw, while you run no risk of overcapping wounds

Clawing Shadows.
Your bread and butter. Replaces Scourge Strike. You cast this when you have the Necrosis buff and when you have wounds to pop. It's a damn strong spell, and it's our primary damage source. 30y range helps a ton.

Death Coil.
Does some shadow damage. Empowers CS. The MOST IMPORTANT SPELL IN YOUR ROTATION. Here's where I go over the nitty gritty of Necrosis. Casting DC gives Necrosis, it is a 5 second non-stacking buff that is consumed by CS to increase that CS cast's damage by 40%. You do not need to imediately cast CS after DC, usually you will, but don't count on it. Necroclaw is not as strong as a refresh on Outbreak, a defile cast, or FS at 0 wounds. What you can do is cast DC, cast outbreak, and then you can CS, the buff is still there and it will still be consumed. It's tempting to DC>outbreak>DC>CS because you think DC needs to be cast right before CS, but you are shooting yourself in the foot, you wasted a DC. This talent is simple, but easy to mess up. Use it right and that's most of your damage. 30y range

Outbreak.
debuffs the target for 6 seconds, applying Plague to all targets in an aoe each second. Maintain Plague. Ezpz. Don't let it drop for more than a second. 30y range.

Defile.
DnD replacer that does more damage. It grows and applies a 200 mastery buff per tick. The buff stscks up to 10, or 2000 mastery. It also causes CS to hit all targets in the pool. When using Defile with 2+ targets, DC\necrosis becomes gcd ineffecient. CS spam is optimal, as each target is 100% bonus damage. Ideally set up wounds on all targets before defiling. Weave DCs if rune starved. This is the hardest spell to use optimally. In ST, it's drop and forget, set up so you have 100% uptime and you're golden.

Blighted Rune Weapon.
Generates 10 wounds over time, use on CD if no risk of wound capping.

Apocalypse.
Burst 6 wounds, get 6 zombies, easy spell. Just watch the CD and 10s before it's up, start watching your wounds. Use at 6 wounds on cd.

Dark Transformation.
Cast and forget dps cd. use on cd

Summon Gargoyle
Cast and forget dps cd. use on cd.

I'm not going over a set rotation. It's a dynamic flow, it's not a priorities list, as your focus shifts depending on where you are. Just use Necrosis and death coil properly and keep Plague up 100%.

The opener is rather set.

Army at 7s before pull, BRW and prepot at 3, Dark Transformation on next gcd, on pull cast Summon Gargoyle running too the boss, and Outbreak after, at this point, you are at the boss, your first melee hit should land, and you cast festering strike twice, and then Apoc at 6-8 wounds. From there, you fall under standard rotation.

Stats. I don't like set stat priorities and think they're for scrubs. Sim yourself. For those who won't sim, str>mast>haste=crit>vers. I strongly suggest simming yourself, there is no downside.

Notable items.

Ring of Collapsing Futures.
Dope ring, good stats, and an active that shoots a shadowbolt off gcd. The shadowbolt does scale off of mastery. But here's the thing, the cast has a 15s cd, bur applies a 30s stacking debuff that progressivly increases the chance of your activation to incur a 5 minute cd. Do not macro it, it requires micro. set up a weakaura or tellmewhen to manage the debuff. During the fight, you typically want no stacks on activation, although towards the end of a fight, you can start gambling its cd with minimal losses. dont put it on a 5m cd 45s into the fight, its a bad idea. This ring's active offers more throughput than some legendary item passives. It is god tier, run kara weekly, save tokens for the final boss.

Instructor's Fourth Lesson.
Meh. I don't think it slots into this build well, and requires an altered verson. This legendary thrives on resource excess, while this build maximizes what little it has. It will likely require its own build. In relation to the Necroclaw build, it upps the FS casts and devalues Necrosis, CS, and mastery as a whole. Lots of anti-synergy

Tak'theritrix's Shoulderpads
Good, but likely requires its own build, Shadow Infusion and Dark Arbiter are musts.

Death March
The new UH lego helm. DC reduces DnD/defile cd by 2s. It's damn good. I think it's the best for this build, although shoulderpads pet build is likely the outright strongest UH spec in 7.1.5. It's just a really solid throughput legendary.

The rest of the legendaries and items impact is typically low.

Enchants, gems, and consumes. Sim yourself, get the best gem/enchant for you. For lazy's 1x Tiger's Eye of Strength, Masterful Shadowruby as gems. Hidden Saytr for neck, 200 str to back, 200 mast to rings, and fallen crusader to weapon. Consumes are Flask of Countless Armies, Nightfallen Delicacy Platter, and Defiled Augment Rune.

This wrapps up what I have, I will likely be updating and touching up on this as the ptr progresses and as patch hits live.

Would you be using prolonged power or old war for this build? I know that for frost on live prolonged is better.

[Shadowman 747]

Well, he is right. Your "guide" is bad and full of errors. Doesn´t matter what he plays on live, he can still see that.

I'm not seeing any numbers backed factual arguments against it. I'm welcomed to constructive criticism, especially backed with numbers, but that's not what i'm seeing. I'm almost sure I'm not 100% correct, but all of my postings have been personally tested to the best of my ability. I want to see people with accurate and documented sims come in, I'd love to see it.

- - - Updated - - -

Would you be using prolonged power or old war for this build? I know that for frost on live prolonged is better.

Prolonged with Heroism, Old War without.

[Acidbaron]

I you find there to be no discussion going on at discord about it i wonder what discord you are part of.

In any case your build remains to be riddled with errors and as based on nothing more then gut feeling and stubornes on this point, i wouldn't listen to a person who fails to understand some basics of the spec and is too stubborn to even admit error, better yet resorts to personal jabs to discredit others who do have in debt sims to prove and compare setups against.

I mean you claim festering strike biggest source is physical damage while the bursting of the wounds what is our biggest source is in matter of fact shadow based. What credibility do you hold when you can't even read the tool tips correctly? You claim bracers are anti-synergy and say it's not rune efficient to burst more wounds but what you fail to grasp is less wounds means less damage dealt, no wonder your information is so misguided when you can only focus on a small scope and can't look at the spec entire output.

Are you literally going to tell me that spamming CS and DC and bursting wounds only what every minute with BRW and/or apocalypse is more damage.

You attack another one saying their sims aren't great and claim it's near your work, but where is your proof, where are your sims, where is your napkin math? Exactly nowhere to be found, and no you come here claiming these things i do not need to go on ptr to test it out since first and foremost PTR tests are not proper benchmarks of builds compared to simulations, unless you want to claim 100000 iterations is the same as using a spell 100 times on a dummy and considering the basis of your "guide" it would not surprise me if you made such a ridiculous claim.

Also seeing you are attacking maxwei on his setup for going CS already and that being tied to his credibility, if you were around for the initial phase of legion you would know that it isn't so sub optimal is as some believe and that the results IF GEARED FOR CS are very close to castigator and actually beat castigator in simulations at higher gear levels.

I think most people with some intellect here would prefer the information provided by a person who participated in the current legion theory crafter then some random dude, who can't even get the basis right and claims universal truths like "CORPSE SHIELD IS A MUST HAVE!" without even being able to name a single fight where it's more useful. I dare to say you recommending the use of it now means you used it on EN mythic, if you even raid mythic, what means you are either bad at avoiding things or your healer team is bad and you need to overcompensate for them.


Also good luck getting decent minds to participate in your so called community effort by calling the dk community garbage, i also found that the best way to get people motivated to work on a document is to initially insult them. /s

I have given this more then enough bumps and until you provide more then your say so, i'll ignore this thread.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm not seeing any numbers backed factual arguments against it. I'm welcomed to constructive criticism, especially backed with numbers, but that's not what i'm seeing. I'm almost sure I'm not 100% correct, but all of my postings have been personally tested to the best of my ability. I want to see people with accurate and documented sims come in, I'd love to see it.

4th post feel free to discredit that with numbers, merely handwaving like you do is not discrediting anything beyond your own credibility which you already have little of on this forum or the dk community in general.

[seussiii]

Also good luck getting decent minds to participate in your so called community effort by calling the dk community garbage, i also found that the best way to get people motivated to work on a document is to initially insult them. /s

First off... His post was constructive. You 2 decided to be negative and condescending rather than be a benefit and provide constructive criticism. I'm sure anyone would be defensive when they go out of their way to put something like this together.

Second, as an outsider thats new to the class and has been an active part in probably 6-7 different discord spec channels... UH has to be the worst.

Not trying to beat up on anyone but just giving my experience... As soon as I joined i was pretty surprised at the things I was reading and the guides that were posted. References to wowhead and icyveins which were both out of date and had conflicting info (not that those are ever all that spot on for most class guides)

Below is a bit that i saw first hand ...this is just from the pinned notes alone lol. These are your mods! All of the other discords reserve Pinned notes mostly for FAQ's and quick resource reference... UH discord pinned notes read like parents who are scolding their kids... quite bad compared to other specs/classes and I'm not really surprised that its bled over into these forums via a few users.

You can have rustled jimmies but if you have spent time in other discord channels you would know that it is probably the worst discord channel BY FAR.

Pinned notes

"Let me make something clear- Whether or not the facts or the right course of action are on your side (i.e. "Go sim yourself"), does not grant any of you the right to act like assholes in here. If someone isn't able to understand your rationale, barking it at them even more rudely accomplishes nothing but your own ego stroking."

"I'm keeping this chanel muted for the next few hours so that people can read this and also because this place seriously needs a time out."

"I'll start by saying that I scrolled back to see chat in this channel the past couple of hours and I'm disgusted."

"What is absolutely not okay however is screaming at someone because they disagree with your assessment of the class. Everyone has their opinion on how "good" X class or Y spec is, and referring to everyone that isn't on board with your position as a "troll", says a lot more about you than it does about them @xxxxxx.
Speaking as someone that literally stopped playing this game because of 7.0 DK design: Insulting others because they disagree with you is not and will never be a valid arguing tactic or an accepted form of communication in this Discord. If you continue to engage in it, you will be removed."

"So let me make this very clear: @xxxxxx, referring to someone as "autistic" isn't allowed in this Discord and tells me you're a bigger child than the people you are raging at. You're officially on notice- step out of line one more time and you're out. Hell, give me a reason and I'll do it right now- I think you can tell that I give very few fucks about whether or not that comes across as "fair"."


Regardless... hats off to the people who are trying to get a constructive conversation going...

[Acidbaron]

I am online during the EU time zone and i rarely to never have a bad run on the unholy discord. I even spend most of my time today giving advice in between some person crying for attention and throwing in childish retorts.

His post is full of misinformation, it's not only not substantiated by anything other than the claim there's napkin math somewhere. Yes i went after his talking points since they were wrong at a basic level, None of this is a personal attack. If someone claims 1+1 = 3 and you say it's false you aren't attacking the person you are going after his claim, if he was right of his case he could have easily came back and provided us a basis to work from.

When another person supplied with a detailed source of what is currently showing as top he started to resort to personal resorts to build up some case of undermining that person credibility and when you do that you open yourself up to attacks from that nature, what is what i called him out on and what he is yet to reply back to and i doubt i'll get actually anything proving his theories, i dare to bet i'll get more chest thumbing stubbornness and probably a personal attack. Not to mention it is fairly idiotic to claim a person who worked on the current unholy document, which for your knowledge are old but not out of date since nothing was changed from 7.0 to 7.1 that would require a guide update of any kind, to be lacking in credibility when he personally is neither know and has yet to provide any work to show others he both knows his class and/or can provide a good document.

So before you @seussiii claim others are attacking him, i invite you to point out at post where he came back and provided us with anything that would proof his claim and opened this discussion at one point he claims it's an open discussion at another point he resorts to attack an actual theory crafter based again on not being fully aware of certain setups in this spec that have been present for months.